On Monday, animal rights attorney with the Nonhuman Rights Project Sam Wise filed a habeas corpus on behalf of three elephants named Minnie, Beulah, and Karen, who live as a part of a traveling circus in Connecticut. Wise is demanding that the Connecticut Superior Court send the elephants to a sanctuary.

Welcome to Big Time Small-Time Dicks, a regular column on The Slot that explores local politicians, small-town scandals, and everything else making life miserable on a local level. Know a small time person who is a big time dick we should feature? Email us.

In the midst of Tuesday night's many and layered disappointments, at least we have this: both North Dakota and Colorado voters decided overwhelmingly to reject "personhood" measures, nakedly obvious attempts to outlaw abortion by conferring new rights on fetuses. But at the same time, because nothing good came out of…

Another election, another attempt to strip women of their autonomy over their own body in favor of an unborn fetus that may have been conceived through rape or incest and may actually be harmful to the woman's health. Every election, anti-abortion restrictions find their way onto the ballot in some state—this year,…

It’s official, this is the Week Of Fools. They are everywhere, even *sarcastic gasp* in the form of a Republican trying to remember the term for ... you know, that thing that stops women from getting pregnant. They're always up in arms about it ... oh yeah, birth control!

Today, probable 2016 Republican Presidential hopeful Rand Paul told a crowd in Iowa that "Nobody here" was trying to ban birth control. Either Rand Paul has a terrible memory, or he has such low self esteem that he considers himself "nobody," because just last year, Rand Paul cosponsored a bill that would have banned…

South Carolina lawmakers are the latest to try and solve the Republican party's favorite logic problem ("You would like to take away women's reproductive autonomy without outright saying that you would like to take away women's reproductive autonomy. How many disingenuous appeals to women's safety must you make to…

These days, you can't swing an IUD around the US Capitol rotunda without hitting at least one politician who claims Americans are Taxed Enough Already!111! and in the same breath claim that both birth control and abortion are goddamn abominations (one of those politicians ran for Vice President last year!). Turns out,…

Most Americans lack access to affordable health care and believe abortion should be legal, but that hasn't stopped some uber-chic fashionistas from daring to break the rules! We've hand-picked five key ways you can wear the most essential anti-choice trends from the runways — er, courtrooms and Senate floors. Let's…

Less than two years ago, 58% of Mississippi voters rejected a personhood initiative that would define life as beginning at conception. Naturally, that hasn't stopped anti-abortion sponsors from filing paperwork for a brand new but nearly identical initiative on Tuesday. Why do they think it will work this time around?…

Alabama State Sen. Shadrack McGill, who looks like a major bro, is reintroducing a bill that would grant legal personhood rights to a human fertilized egg and ban abortion at all stages, reports the Huffington Post. Oh, goody.

Wisconsin Congressman, Romney running mate, and widow's peak cultivator Paul Ryan has again cosponsored the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which would grant "all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood" to a "one-celled human embryo," even before implantation. The only problem is that a…

Michigan's lawmaking prodigies have proposed an amendment to the state's income tax code that would allow pregnant women to claim their 12-week or older fetuses as dependents. Which is sort of a cool idea, until you consider the fact 1- this is just another not-super-under-the-radar attempt to redefine what a person…

Soup Not-si Paul Ryan may believe that human life begins at conception, but that view isn't quite as popular with the rest of sane America. Or the court system, apparently. After failing to pass Personhood in Mississippi last fall, not a one "Zygotes Are People, Too!" measure will be appearing on any state ballots…

Who knew that "Every Sperm is Sacred" would be an anthem of the now-inevitable nadir of the abortion debate? Case in point: Evangelical couples doing their part to save babies by adopting... other couples' frozen embryos. And then unfreezing the embryos, implanting them in evangelical wombs, giving birth to them, and…

Reasonable residents of Colorado can all breathe a sigh of relief now that the personhood movement has failed for a third time to garner enough support for a ballot measure that would suggest giving fertilized eggs the same rights as people.

The GOP has just agreed that for the next four years, all of the human grown-ups who identify with the party will promote a constitutional amendment that defines life as something that starts at the moment of conception — this means that from the very second an ovum becomes a zygote, that reproductive cell is a full…

To most women, Paul Ryan's ideas are pretty much the political equivalent of menstruating forever. But it seems like some new analysis of legislation he wrote really takes the cake: if Paul Ryan had his way, theoretically, a rapist would be able to sue his victim in order to prevent her from having an abortion. Hey…

It's really too bad that the word FAIL emblazoned across a picture of something failing miserably has become a cliche, because America's floundering but tenacious Personhood movement is perfectly suited to be meme-ified. In 2008 and 2010, voters in Colorado rejected a Personhood amendment that would have defined human…